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“If one is hopelessly undecided as to what to say,
there, silence is golden.”
The mind of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was itself some-thing
of a wonderland. A mathematician by profession at
Oxford University, he made his reputation in geometry and
logic. From childhood he’d been interested in puzzles and
games: he created cryptograms, rebuses, and word
puzzles, many of which he eventually put into his books.
A copious correspondent, he wrote some letters back
to front, others in mirror-writing and spiral formation. He
designed a mnemonic system for remembering names and
dates, a system for writing in the dark, and another system
for seating guests at dinner parties. His own pen name was
something of a word game: he created it by reversing and
Latinizing his own name: Lutwidge became Ludovicus,
thus Lewis. Charles became Carolus, thus Carroll.
His first book, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, was
written by hand and illustrated by Carroll for his neighbor,
the young Alice Liddell. Rewritten and expanded, it
became a huge success on publication. It was a major
accomplishment for children’s literature not only in its
sophistication but in its rarity of vision: rarely has nonsense
made such perfect sense. |
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Lewis Carroll
(1832–1898) |
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